Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Luke's Cauliflower Salad with Modifications

Before the fall semester began, I went to a get-together for the graduate students that I've worked with this semester. One of the grad students named Luke brought a cauliflower salad to the potluck that was quite good. So I asked him for the recipe since Mrs. Nasty is crazy about cauliflower, and I'm a fan also. Usually I find ranch dressing to be an abomination, but the stuff works for me in this salad.

What follows is the base recipe that Luke provided:

Dry:

1 whole cauliflower chopped, the florets chopped to bite size pieces (4 cups)

1 stalk of celery, chopped finely (1/2 cup)

1 large carrot or two small carrots shredded (1 1/2 cups)

3-4 green onions, chopped finely (1/2 cup)

Wet:

3/4 cup of Ranch dressing

3/4 or a full cup of Parmesan

1 teaspoon of minced garlic

1 tablespoon of dried parsley

You mix the wet ingredients into the dry and let it chill for at least fifteen minutes.

Since I don't have dried parsley in house for whatever reason and I have a penchant to add herbs and spices to recipes, I modified the recipe a bit by making these additions to the wet ingredients: one small shallot chopped finely, a large smidge of thyme, a small smidge of marjoram, a very small smidge of tarragon, and a smidge of smoked paprika.

Oh, and I also added a half slab of turkey bacon into the mix, cut into small pieces of course.